Vision: because of the work we do youth living in poverty today will be starting jobs and entering careers out of poverty by age 25

In Chicago, Baltimore and other big cities, media stories constantly remind us of the negative impact of concentrated poverty and inequality. New research is published monthly, showing the impacts of inequality and how where you are born and where you live often determines what your future will be.

Since 1993, the Tutor/Mentor Connection (led by The Tutor/Mentor Institute, LLC since 2011) has led a year-round strategy intended to mobilize attention and involvement of people in all parts of the Chicago region, and to focus it on high poverty areas of inner city neighborhoods, using maps, and a Program Locator Database, to help volunteers, donors, business, faith groups, parents and students connect with youth serving programs which already operate in different parts of the city and suburbs, or to help build new programs in undeserved areas.

To achieve this goal, many people need to spread this message to people in their network, who become volunteers or donors. And many of these people need to spread the work in their own networks. The end result might be the growth of leaders from every part of "the village" who become champions for tutor/mentor programs and the T/MC strategy . This chart illustrates the goal.

This web site, and others created over the past 18 years, provide a wealth of resources that leaders in any city can use to build comprehensive, long-term strategies that fill high poverty neighborhoods with a wide range of learning, tutoring, mentoring and career development programs serving k-12 youth. View this video to see what's in different sections of this web site. View this video (or this concept map)to see a learning path you and your team might take to become familiar with all of this information.

View this T/MC strategy map, and see how we can increase the number of volunteer-based tutoring/mentoring and learning programs serving inner-city youth by building leadership teams in businesses, churches, colleges, hospitals, etc.